Another Admin burnout - WikiEN-l

20 Dec 2007

George Herbert wrote:

...
  It's been a recurring theme, but the point is that
we still haven't
 figured out how to detect and head off (talk to, counsel, convince to
 take a stress-break and come back, whatever) flameouts by admins and
 longtime editors.

 There's a difference between people chosing to leave the project, and
 a project where the usual mode of leaving for experienced participants
 is an antagonistic conflict incident blowing up.

 That we haven't really come up with good solutions doesn't mean that
 we should stop noting incidents as they happen. 
"Admin burn-out" is one of those topics that I've been interested too -- 
especially since at any given moment I post on WP:AN (or related pages) I 
am the Admin who's been on Wikipedia the longest; I once described myself 
as starting on Wikipedia back when Jimbo Wales was not even a "God-king" 
but just an aristocrat who bought himelf a magic book. In some cases, I 
have been an Admin longer than some Admins have had Wikipedia accounts. 
(This has been the case since Zoe bailed earlier this year.) And this is a 
distinction I'm not especially happy to hold.

(Note: there are a number of Admins senior to me still active on Wikipedia; 
occasionally I'll wonder what happened to someone, look at their 
contributions page, & see that she or he made a few dozen edits -- often 
more -- in the last couple of days. However, they keep an even lower profile 
than me, rarely, if ever, appearing on the Admin Noticeboards & related 
pages. Why is that if an Admin doesn't burn out, he retreats to an obscure 
corner of Wikipedia or just limits himself to Wikignoming? Your guess is 
as good as mine.)

I don't know whether my longevity is because I *don't* try to handle the 
hard cases, edit controversial articles (at least not after I learn the 
hard way that they are controversial) or work very hard at fighting vandalism 
or spam -- in other words, maybe I'm just Admincruft -- or its because I 
stumbled across the secret at surviving the often vicious atmosphere at 
Wikipedia. For anyone who's curious, my strategy has been to remember that 
the problem people always, in the end, get themselves kicked off of 
Wikipedia, & act accordingly. For example, when I'm in conflict in an 
article, & I'm convinced that the other person is a (insert here your 
favorite term of abuse) who is entirely, undeniably wrong (or has been 
doing most of her/his research with the help of illegal substances), what I 
do is ... sit back & wait 3 months, then go back & edit the article. 
Sometimes I make the changes I was originally fighting for, but more often I 
realize that the section in dispute ought to read another way -- sometimes 
the exact text what my opponent was arguing for, but for one reason or 
another I wasn't persuaded. Amazing what a curious mind can learn in 
three months!

For this admittedly passive attitude towards Adminship (if not Wikiepdia 
in general) to work, obviously I rely on other Admins to do the dirty work. 
For this reason, it would be useful to know how I can support the 
harder-working Admins so they can keep doing what they do. Telling me to 
"keep an eye on them" is not a good solution, since much of my work for 
Wikipedia is researching content -- out of 8 hours I might spend on 
Wikipedia, at least half of it is reading various sources, more often books 
than webpages, & trying to figure out how to usefully integrate it into 
the relevant articles. (BTW, even in my most focussed moments of 
researching, I find that 90% of what I find is not immediately usable for 
one reason or another -- most often because I don't see how I can add it 
to an article.) This means I often learn about the latest "blow-up" 
several hours -- if not several days -- after it appears to be all over, 
& someone has put a "Topic closed" notice on the thread.

If anything, I find myself more & more arguing with other Admins over how 
to deal with a perceived troublemaker; either there are an increasing number 
of people on Wikipedia who think in black-n-white, think anyone who 
criticizes Wikipedia is more dangerous than _The Register_ (or whoever is 
this week's most dangerous threat), & are upset that we are "too 
easy-going" on the troublemakers, or I am far too laid back. Since I have 
no problem dropping an indef block on people who are clearly troublemakers 
(anyone can look at my Admin log to see that I have dropped the banhammer 
from time to time), I don't think it's the latter. Most of the people 
who claim that Wikipedia's not honest about the claim that "anyone can 
edit" are, undeniably, the ones who got banned for good & understandible 
reasons; but I'm finding an increasing number of cases where newbies are 
getting the bum's rush for obvious newbie mistakes, & end up complaining 
about how Wikipedia is run by some inner circle.

Geoff